A re­new­able en­er­gy ex­pert said there are tril­lions of dol­lars and end­less busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties in “go­ing green.”

The stark re­al­i­ties of glob­al warm­ing, its ef­fects and pos­si­ble so­lu­tions, were dis­cussed dur­ing a me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sen­si­ti­sa­tion ses­sion on glob­al warm­ing re­port­ing re­cent­ly held at the Mag­dale­na Grand Ho­tel and Golf Re­sort.

Ac­cord­ing to Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy sources such as coal are be­ing phased out. He cit­ed coun­tries such as Qatar which have in­vest­ed in re­new­able en­er­gy sources al­though they have large oil re­serves.

He said the “green” in­dus­try has vast po­ten­tial.

“There is an es­ti­mat­ed $23 tril­lion out there in in­vest­ments wait­ing to be ac­cessed from var­i­ous sources for cli­mate ac­tion and the op­por­tu­ni­ties are for the cre­ation of jobs in green tech­nol­o­gy in the ap­pli­ca­tion and the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try of green com­po­nents, so­lar en­er­gy as an ex­am­ple.”

He said T&T should look at re­new­able en­er­gy as an op­tion for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

“We have the ca­pac­i­ty, we have the ex­pe­ri­ence, we have the knowl­edge and the ex­per­tise, we could look at the op­por­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate PV parts (so­lar sys­tem com­po­nents) that are in­creas­ing­ly go­ing to be in de­mand.”

Ku­mars­ingh al­so re­vealed that by 2021 the tem­per­a­ture on plan­et earth would in­crease by three to six per cent, a di­rect re­sult of hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty over time.

He said it will af­fect the en­vi­ron­ment.

“We can see changes in wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty in the fu­ture, in­creased in­ci­dence of vec­tor-borne dis­eases. You are go­ing to have con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of potable wa­ter, more spread of wa­ter-borne dis­ease and if the at­mos­phere gets hot­ter, there will be an in­crease in hu­mid­i­ty and this cre­ates a more con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment for mos­qui­toes to breed.”

Ku­mars­ingh al­so said a warmer plan­et will see de­creased agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion be­cause the soil will get dri­er and some ar­eas will ex­pe­ri­ence more in­tense rain­fall, re­sult­ing in floods and loss of crops.

He said Caribbean is­lands’ in­fra­struc­tures are al­so un­der threat as warmer con­di­tions in­crease vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to storms and hur­ri­canes, af­fect­ing in­fra­struc­tures along the coast­line.

He al­so spoke about the threat to un­der­wa­ter life forms.

“Sea lev­els are ris­ing in­cre­men­tal­ly each year. The Caribbean Sea and At­lantic ocean are be­com­ing more acidic, even at a mod­er­ate warm­ing rate of 1.5 per cent, about 99 per cent of all coral reefs will die at two per cent by 2021.”

Ku­mars­ingh in­di­cat­ed that if glob­al warm­ing con­tin­ues at the same rate, the tem­per­a­ture is pro­ject­ed to in­crease by three to six de­grees re­sult­ing in cat­a­stroph­ic re­sults on a glob­al scale.

He warned that green­house emis­sions and lifestyle choic­es, as well as coal and oil and gas us­age, must de­crease to pre­vent the sit­u­a­tion from go­ing from bad to worse.